Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/125

Rh :The Assizes ended at Worcester, which prov'd a Maiden Assizes, none being capitally convicted; and the Sheriffs, according to custom, presented the Judges with white Gloves. Three were cast for Transportation.

Of purely literary matter there is exceedingly little to record. The most noticeable perhaps is a series of articles copied from the Grub Street Journal, on Dr. Bentley's unfortunate edition of Milton. The writer severely criticises the presumptuous and chimerical emendations of the great philologist. Another eminent name is suggested by a notice of a marriage which appears in June 1736: —


 * June 3, Edward Gibbon, Esq., of Putney, Member of Parliament for Petersfield, to Miss Porteen.

These were the parents of the historian. With one more literary waif we conclude these desultory notices. It is a modest advertisement in the Gentleman's Magazine; —


 * At Edial, near Litchfield in Staffordshire, Young Gentlemen are Boarded and Taught the Latin and Greek Languages by.

 

 From The Saturday Review.

record of travel through such an unknown country as the heart of China, extending over four months, must have procured an enthusiastic welcome for its author had he returned in safety as Lieutenant Cameron did from central Africa. A double interest is attached to this work from the unfortunate death of the author at the hands of a band of murderous Chinese. The exact circumstances of the murder may probably never be known, though Mr. Grosvenor's mission can be trusted to do all in its power to ascertain whether the attack was the result of premeditation and hatred or of panic and chance. The biography of Mr. Margary is short and simple. A son of an officer of high rank in the engineers, who was attached to the Bombay presidency, he was educated at a private school and at Brighton College, and entrusted to the care of relatives, like so many other children of Anglo-Indian officials. He seems by all accounts to have been a lad of strong affections, great liveliness and intelligence, and undoubted pluck. His connection with Mr. Austen Layard, our minister at Madrid, enabled him to obtain a nomination to the diplomatic service and to go out to China as a student interpreter. The supporters of competitive examinations, if they read this diary, may feel a qualm when they learn that Mr. Margary all but missed entrance into the diplomatic service, seeing that it was not until his fourth attempt that he could pass the prescribed test. However, at Pekin, Chefoo, and Shanghai he very soon made up for lost way, and in a short time was able to speak Chinese fluently and correctly, discoursing with local magnates, and even comprehending provincialisms of pronunciation and phraseology. In August 1874, to his evident surprise and gratification, he received instructions from our minister at Pekin to undertake a journey right through the south-western provinces of China, and so meet a party which, under the command of Colonel Browne, was to start from Rangoon to Bhamo in order to open out a route for commerce between Burmah and the Chinese Empire. The remaining facts are few and soon told. In less than five months he accomplished this journey, joined Colonel Browne at Bhamo, started again eastward with the mission, and was cut off, when a little ahead of the others, in the neighborhood of Manwyne. He was not then thirty years of age. That Englishmen should wish to know something of his last adventures is perfectly natural and proper, and the present volume, which is intended to satisfy that desire, is made up of a short biographical notice, of extracts from his letters and his diary, and of a concluding chapter from the pen of Sir R. Alcock, in which that accomplished diplomatist discusses the value of these expeditions, and the chance of their creating new and profitable channels for commerce. Criticism of the diary and letters in a mere literary point of view would be out of place. We shall only remark that two or three of the ordinary incidents of his journey have been needlessly told twice over. A little judicious revision, for instance, would have avoided the repetition of a meeting with a Pekin magistrate (pp. 167 and 173), and of a day's sport after waterfowl, in which he was obliged to divest himself of his gaiters and boots (pp. 301 and 306). But these slight blemishes are due to the compiler; and there is a manliness, a cheerful spirit, 